Is this a real filibuster or not?

Shh! Don’t tell the Twitters, or C-SPAN, or Harry Reid’s office, but Sen. Ted Cruz’s Senate floor talkathon CAN actually be considered a filibuster.

It just depends on how you define “filibuster.”

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“This has been the question du jour,” said Kate Scott, Senate assistant historian, chuckling. “The answer is: There is no good definition of a filibuster and it depends on what you think a filibuster is.”

You never would have known from Twitter, when the hashtag #fakefilibuster lit up the web as the firebrand Texas Republican began railing against Obamacare on the floor.

Cruz, who was in the 19th hour of his marathon talk on the Senate floor by midmorning Wednesday, began his Senate floor show at 2:41 p.m. Tuesday, when he vowed keep protest the continuing resolution “until I am no longer able to stand.”

Sure sounds like a filibuster — but for one problem: Cruz is utterly powerless meet his end-goal of stopping the Senate from voting on the government funding bill.

And that, “fake-filibuster” skeptics say, makes all the difference

Whereas most filibusters are used to disrupt Senate procedure and block lawmakers form advancing legislation, Cruz won’t have that ability. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has already scheduled a vote on the continuing resolution for Wednesday early afternoon, at which time Cruz will be booted from the floor.

“Walking into Capitol to take 11-1 shift presiding over the Senate for this pointless fairy tale non-filibuster,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) complained on Twitter.

Even C-SPAN jumped on the no-filibuster bandwagon.

“This is technically not a filibuster since Sen. Cruz is not delaying action on a bill,” reads a screenshot caption of the Congress channel’s Cruz footage from 5:30 a.m., captured by Talking Points Memo. “He must stop speaking before the Senate votes later today.”

But the Senate historian’s office has a different take. They found yes, this could be a filibuster — mostly because there is no set definition of what a “filibuster” actually is.

“Our answer to that is that filibusters traditionally don’t have to be something that’s meant to delay a piece of legislative business,” Scott said. “Filibusters can also be one member’s effort to get word out and educate people … Some people think it’s specifically to stop legislation, but it’s not necessarily to do that.”

Of course, even the experts disagree.

“This is a put-up job,” said former Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove, noting reports that Cruz and Reid set the terms beforehand. “It’s not like filibusters I have watched, where they really were trying to delay things.”